Last night in my dream I jumped off a cliff. I then saw I was going to hit the ground, and decided to change my trajectory to a deep pool of water. Then I thought "If this was a whirlpool, where would I end up after getting sucked down?" After being submerged a while i the whirlpool, I think I may have started to wake up. So before the dream even ended I started trying to do a DEILD. Eventually I gave up, but I never actually remembered waking from that attempt. It may have just led out of the dream and into NREM.

My point of posting this is that throughout the experience I had a very strong atmosphere of lucidity about me, and I exerted far more dream control than I ever had. But I never remember actually realizing I was dreaming or even doing an RC. I don't remember how I got to the cliff, because right before that all I remember is an explosion in the last scene. So is it possible to skip the moment of realization and transition smoothly into lucidity, or is it possible I may have just not remembered my "A-ha" moment but remembered what happened after, or did I possibly just have a dream about bream control? I felt the need to ask because I feel equally pulled toward each conclusions.